Arthur Barrow passed the audition and achieved one of the main goals he’d set for himself when moving to Los Angeles in 1975. In the process, he sparked a classic rearrangement of one of the maestro’s signature compositions, “St. Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast” from 1974’s Apostrophe. Ex. 1 is exactly what Barrow played on his audition, and it stands as one of the most terrifying unison lines ever performed by a bassist of any era, period.
“Frank asked me to transcribe and learn the ‘Alfonzo’ melody after I told him I’d learned the melody to ‘Inca Roads’ [another difficult Zappa composition] by ear as an exercise,” Barrow recalls. “I can’t say whether Frank was looking for someone who could do that, or if it was just a challenge to see if I was bluffing—but once he had a guy who could play it, why not have him do it? It’s an example of Frank adapting an arrangement to the abilities of the musicians in the band. The recorded versions are just snapshots of the way the songs were arranged at that time for that band. The songs were constantly evolving, before and after they were released to the public.” The new arrangement was immortalized by Zappa’s 1978 touring band—which included a young Vinnie Colaiuta on drums—on the album You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 1 as a part of the track “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow.”
This rendition of “St. Alfonzo’s” is much faster than the original; one’s jaw can’t help but drop when the relentless line kicks in. It sounds almost atonal, with highly unusual interval jumps and a shape-shifting dissonance throughout. But Arthur found some methodology to the madness. Try following this: “If you look at the melody in small groups, say four to eight notes, you can almost always find a tonal center, however briefly held. It starts in Bb Lydian. Then in the last six notes of bar 2, [Zappa] uses half-steps and 4ths as leading tones through a Bach-like diminished transition. The first eight notes of bar 3 are Db Lydian, or you can think of it as F natural minor. The last eight notes are in F major, and so on. If you can’t make sense of it, then you just have to think in terms of patterns of intervals.”
Barrow and I spent an hour on the phone as he relayed to me the tablature and related fingering he used to pull this off. I have to admit, once I started working through it, it came more quickly than I imagined it could (at 100 bpm, mind you—not 152!). Arthur played it with a pick, but it can be done fingerstyle as well, depending on your right-hand dexterity. There’s a good deal of playing in position, but you need to know when to jump positions and have the presence of mind to execute the shifts quickly. There are several spots to watch out for: Beats three and four of bar 3 (a double jump up), beat three of bar 4 (an open string followed by a big jump down), the middle of bar 5 (climbing up the D string), the first two beats of bar 6 (descending awkwardly on the G string), and finally, one last open-string jump (bar 7, beat three) before you stay in 1st position for some crazy interval jumping to bring it home. Barrow’s tips: Start slow, be precise, and use the same fingerings every time before speeding it up. “Frank pushed his musicians as far as he could with musical challenges, so I found myself doing things that I never thought I could have done or even conceived could be done. It may have helped that I was playing a Gibson Ripper, which allowed me to use a pretty light touch. Having said all that, I also practiced a lot!”
A unison line like this in a song about church pancakes, stolen margarine, and the patron saint of Portuguese smelt fishermen (yes, really) is, well, totally ridiculous. And that’s the point. It’s worth remembering that the band was usually laughing while they played this. Arthur sums it up with a little advice: “Practice your technique at home, but when you play for real, play with the abandon of a child who’s picking up the instrument for the first time!”
Bryan Beller has worked with Mike Keneally for 13 years, and he has also worked with Steve Vai, Wayne Kramer (MC5), Dweezil Zappa, and many others. He’s also a freelance writer in the literary sense. His debut solo album is called View [Onion Boy Records]. More info exists plentifully at www.bryanbeller.com.